UNFORGETTABLE DeWitt Wallace

HE WAS A QUIET MAN WHO SAID LITTLE PUBLICLY. DEWITT WALLACE SPOKE INSTEAD THROUGH READER’S DIGEST, WHICH BECAME THE WORLD’S LARGEST INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE. IN ITS PAGES HE TOLD MORE STORIES AND BROUGHT MORE INFORMATION—AND LAUGHTER—TO MORE READERS THAN PERHAPS ANY OTHER MAN WHO LIVED.

THE SCENE IS Greenwich Village, New York City, one morning in January 1922. The Village, where rents are low, is a quaint bohemian place peopled by artists, poets, and writers. Those who deal with the printed word come to New York to be near literary markets.

At No 1 Minetta Lane, in a basement storeroom office, the last copies of the first issue of Reader’s Digest, with a February 1922 cover date, are being readied for shipment. The work is supervised by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Acheson Wallace, founders and co-editors of the magazine. They have hired habitués of the speakeasy upstairs to help.

Finally, the last of 5,000 copies are wrapped, addressed, trussed in postbags, and set outside. A taxi will take them to the nearest post office, from where they will be sent to subscribers. Then will come days of anxious waiting to see if the little newcomer is indeed what the world has been waiting for.

Lila Acheson Wallace, 32, is brunette, blue-eyed, and petite. A